China’s Xi to promote globalization at Davos, not ‘war and poverty’

China’s President Xi Jinping will promote “inclusive globalization” at this month’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos and will warn that populist approaches can lead to “war and poverty”, Chinese officials said on Wednesday.

This year’s forum, from Jan. 17-20, is expected to be dominated by discussion of a surge in public hostility toward globalization and the rise of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, whose tough talk on trade, including promises of tariffs against China and Mexico, helped win him the White House. Trump will be sworn in on Jan. 20.continue

ABBAS TO MEET POPE FRANCIS IN ADVANCE OF PARIS PARLEY

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Saturday, just one day before France is scheduled to host an international peace conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Abbas’ audience with the Pope, will be the third meeting between the two men since Pope Francis’ papacy began in 2013.continue

Muslims Meeting Jesus By The Thousands

There’s a side of the Muslim refugee story you probably have not heard in the mainstream media. We’ve seen the video clips of Muslim refugees—many of them from war-torn Syria—flooding into an unprepared and overwhelmed Europe. We’ve heard accounts of some of these refugees committing ugly crimes and others demanding that the post-Christian societies that welcome them conform to the harsh demands of Islamic law.

We’ve even read the stories about Islamist terror groups such as ISIS infiltrating the refugee populations in order to wreak further havoc on the West. But chances are you don’t know, as Paul Harvey might have said, the rest of the story. It’s a story of God building His kingdom in the midst of chaos, doubt, and uncertainty. It’s a story of Muslims meeting Jesus. Take, for example, the story of Javad. FULL REPORT

US election live: Donald Trump vows to ‘do a great job’ as president

Donald Trump has claimed victory before a crowd of cheering supporters at his New York headquarters, calling on Americans to “come together as one united people” and congratulating Hillary Clinton on a hard-fought battle.continue

John Podesta Refuses To Concede, Hillary Clinton Fails To Show

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton failed to show up at her own victory party at the Jacob K. Javits center, while campaign chairman John Podesta spoke after 2:00 a.m. and declined to concede the election. Despite trailing to Trump 254-218, and with the Associated Press already calling Pennsylvania for Donald Trump, Podesta struck a defiant posture, urging Hillary Clinton’s supporters to go home and “get some sleep,” insisting that every vote be counted.

During the third presidential debate, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was challenged as to whether he would accept the results of the election if he lost. (He had already answered that question in the affirmative in the first debate.) When he left the question open, Democrats and media critics suggested that his position was a threat to American democracy. FULL REPORT

Protests Ignite In California After Trump Win

Hours after Donald Trump became president-elect, spontaneous protests erupted early Wednesday in Oakland as demonstrators sought to block freeways in the city. A protestor was struck by a vehicle on the eastbound lanes of Highway 24 although it was not immediately clear what the extent of the victim’s injuries were.

Up to 100 people were said to have gathered in downtown Oakland to protest the results. Many spectators had gathered on Telegraph Avenue and continue to march. BART has shut down the 12th street station in downtown Oakland as a result. READ MORE

NASA Warns “Matter Of Time Until Asteroid Strikes America”

NASA experts have said an asteroid impact could wipe out a city the size of Los Angeles. The American space agency recently held an “emergency” summit to explore the apocalyptic risk posed by doomsday space rocks.

Paul Chodas, leader of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, issued a terrifying warning about the destructive potential of asteroids during an interview with Motherboard. He said:

“The air burst is the main hazard if it hit anywhere near land, which in this case would be equivalent to a 50 megaton explosion which would cause a large shock wave. “It would be devastating for a region with a 40-50 kilometre radius around the impact point.” READ MORE

NATO Puts 300,000 Troops On ‘High Alert’ In Readiness For A Confrontation With Russia, Fears Grow Putin Preparing To Attack West

Nato chiefs, thrown into a panic by fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin might attack the West, are scrambling to put together a force of 300,000 troops which they can put on ‘high alert’. Relations between Russia and the West have plunged in the last year, with Moscow’s insistence on backing its Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, at all costs leading to serious tension with the US, Britain and France.

Most Nato members cut their defence spending dramatically since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 but Russia has been bolstering its military capabilities, holding parades involving more than 100,000 troops each year. Moscow has been throwing its weight around in recent years – in 2008 Russian troops humiliated the Georgians and in turn the White House by invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia in support of pro-Moscow rebels. FULL REPORT

Israel should declare sovereignty over the occupied territories in the West Bank, which is home to Israeli settlers, if the UN adopts any Security Council resolution further condemning illegal settlement activity, Israel’s education minister said.
The Palestinians have initiated several unilateral resolutions at the UN Security Council over the years with an aim to condemn Israel over its illegal construction activities in Judea and Samaria.

They hope that international pressure might help to facilitate peace settlement talks with the Jewish state. In September, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas assured the UN General Assembly that Palestine would renew its strive to pass a Security Council resolution declaring Jewish “settlements” illegal. READ MORE

RUMORS OF WARS: Half Of Russians Fear Syria Standoff Could Spark WW3

Almost half of all respondents in a recent opinion poll said they feared that the aggravation of relations between Russia and the West caused by the ongoing crisis in Syria could develop into a global military conflict. The share of those who see the probability of World War Three in the near future as high or very high is now at 48 percent and those who appraise it as low or very low comprise 42 percent of society,

the privately-owned public opinion research center Levada reported on Monday. The remaining 10 percent of respondents said they couldn’t give a simple answer to the question. When researchers asked citizens if they considered it possible that Russia and the West would eventually find a mutually acceptable solution to the crisis, 35 percent answered that this scenario was likely or very likely. READ MORE

A large chunk of space rock is coming dangerously close to the vicinity of the Earth, but scientists are sure it won’t collide with our planet, thanks to a new NASA tool designed to detect potentially hazardous space fly-bys. The incoming rock was detected by the NASA-funded Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) on Maui, Hawaii, on October 26. A new early-warning system, named Scout, promptly analyzed the data on the rock and concluded that the object went in the direction of Earth,

but would miss it by about 500,000km (310,000 miles). “The NASA surveys are finding something like at least five asteroids every night,” NASA Jet Propulsion Lab astronomer Paul Chodas said. Scout is a computer program currently undergoing tests in JPL in Pasadena, California. It is constantly scanning data from telescopes worldwide, in search for so-called Near Earth Objects (NEO). FULL REPORT

DEVELOPING: Mystery Continues As Hundreds Of Kids Suddenly Paralyzed

Erin Olivera waited weeks for doctors to tell her why her youngest son was paralyzed. Ten-month-old Lucian had started crawling oddly — his left leg dragging behind his right — and soon was unable to lift his head, following Erin only with his eyes.

She took him to a hospital in Los Angeles, but doctors there didn’t know how to treat what they saw. Lucian’s legs felt soft as jelly and he couldn’t move them. His breathing became rapid. The left side of his smile drooped as his muscles weakened. FULL REPORT

DEVELOPING: Italian Earthquakes Could Go On For Weeks In Domino Effect

The earthquakes that have buffeted central Italy over the last two months could continue in a devastating domino effect with one large quake leading to another along the central Apennine fault system, a leading seismologist warned on Sunday. An earthquake measuring 6.6 according to the U.S. Geological Survey struck on Sunday in the same region where a 6.2 quake on Aug. 24 killed 297 people. In between there have been thousands of smaller tremors,

including a 6.1 quake on Wednesday. The latest earthquake caused no known casualties but was the strongest to hit Italy, one of the world’s most seismically active countries, since 1980.Gianluca Valensise, a seismologist at Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, told Reuters there was a “geodynamic link” between the deadly August earthquake and all those that have followed. READ MORE

Genetically Engineered Humans Will Arrive Sooner Than You Think. And We’re Not Ready.

Artificial intelligence has become the pet anxiety of luminaries like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking. They have all expressed concerns about our Promethean quest to develop machine intelligence, and those concerns seem to be spreading every day. But there’s another dimension of technological change that ought to worry us every bit as much as AI, if not more so. Bioengineering has already allowed human beings to take control of their own evolution.

Whether it’s emergent cloning technologies or advanced gene therapy, we’re quickly approaching a world in which humans can — and will — change the way they live and die. Michael Bess is a historian of science at Vanderbilt University and the author of a fascinating new book

Are Forced Vaccinations In The Near Future?

A public-interest legal team has filed comments with the federal government objecting to a planned Centers for Disease Control rule-change that would allow the government to impose forced vaccinations on Americans under certain circumstances. Erin Mersino, senior legal counsel for the Great Lakes Justice Center, explained: “This proposed rule is an abuse of power under the pretext of protecting public safety.

The government increasingly acts without constitutional authority, thereby undermining good governance under the rule of law.” The proposal from the CDC comes in the context of defining government’s power to act against individuals in the case of an outbreak of a communicable disease. READ MORE

Millions Of Mutant Mosquitoes To Be Released In Brazil

Scientists in Brazil are preparing to release millions of factory-bred mosquitoes in an attempt to wipe out their distant cousins that carry tropical diseases. The insects’ method: have sex and then die. British firm Oxitec says its genetically modified mosquitoes will swarm in among ordinary species such as Aedes aegypti, the insect that carries feared diseases such as Zika, dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya.

They will mate with the females of the ordinary mosquitoes, spawning babies with a genetically inbuilt flaw that causes them to die quickly. With their work done, the modified father mosquitoes will then give up the ghost themselves — as they are genetically programmed to do. FULL REPORT

Western governments will try to avoid a probe into human rights abuses committed by rebel groups as they attack western Aleppo, Jim Jatras, former US diplomat, told RT. Dr. Said Sadiq, professor of political sociology, also joins the conversation. continue

Parents Plan To Arm Themselves While Trick-Or-Treating Over Clown Concerns

Some Florida residents plan to take some extra precautions when they trick-or-treat with their children on Monday amid reports of creepy clowns scaring communities. Kimberly Kersey told Florida Today that she plans to carry a gun while taking her sons around her Palm Bay neighborhood after two men were arrested last week for allegedly threatening people while dressed as clowns.

“I’ll be carrying for sure, I’m not leaving to chance,” she said. “I’m terrified of clowns already and if one messes with me or my kids it’ll be to the hospital or morgue they go.” Pam Metz, of Titusville, said she plans to carry around a baseball bat on Halloween because she doesn’t have a gun. FULL REPORT

A large chunk of space rock is coming dangerously close to the vicinity of the Earth, but scientists are sure it won’t collide with our planet, thanks to a new NASA tool designed to detect potentially hazardous space fly-bys. The incoming rock was detected by the NASA-funded Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) on Maui, Hawaii, on October 26. A new early-warning system, named Scout, promptly analyzed the data on the rock and concluded that the object went in the direction of Earth,

but would miss it by about 500,000km (310,000 miles). “The NASA surveys are finding something like at least five asteroids every night,” NASA Jet Propulsion Lab astronomer Paul Chodas said. Scout is a computer program currently undergoing tests in JPL in Pasadena, California. It is constantly scanning data from telescopes worldwide, in search for so-called Near Earth Objects (NEO). FULL REPORT

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is preparing an army of robots and drones to take on its enemies, Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin admits

Russians investing heavily in military just weeks after rustbucket aircraft carrier was mocked as it steamed through English Channel cont

A RUSSIAN nuclear submarine operating covertly in waters off the coast of Britain is being tracked by the Royal Navy. cont

Obama’s Israel Surprise?

The Middle East has few bright spots these days, but one is the budding rapprochement between Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, thanks to shared threats from Iran and Islamic State. Now the Obama Administration may have plans to wreck even that.cont

Weathering a Zika Storm in Colombia

BARRANQUILLA, Colombia — This tropical city on the Caribbean coast may hold the answer to one of the deeper mysteries of the Zika epidemic: Why has the world’s second-largest outbreak, after Brazil’s, produced so few birth defects?cont